Michael Polansky is training an AI on living human skin

Michael Polansky is training an AI model on human skin that stays alive outside the body for up to a month at his startup Outer Biosciences. The Michael Polansky training model predicts cosmetic compounds, tests them on that living tissue, and learns from every result—generating roughly one new ingredient candidate every six weeks. After years of near-total secrecy, Polansky is now going public about the platform he co-founded in 2022.

Key Takeaways

• Outer Biosciences, led by Polansky—Lady Gaga's partner and a former Sean Parker deputy—keeps discarded surgical skin viable for weeks instead of days.
• An AI loop predicts untested chemicals, runs them on living tissue, and learns from hits and misses; six active leads and several dozen compounds are in the pipeline.
• The company has raised about $23 million, employs 19 people near Cambridge, Massachusetts, and plans to license ingredients to beauty and pharma brands.
• Lady Gaga sits on the board; her Haus Labs brand collaborates with Outer Biosciences on scientific advisory work.

Who is Michael Polansky—and why is he building this?

Polansky is CEO of Outer Biosciences and, publicly, best known as the partner of Stefani Germanotta (Lady Gaga). Before biotech, he studied applied math and computer science at Harvard, worked at Bridgewater Associates, and spent years as a top deputy to Sean Parker—helping stand up the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.

Outer Biosciences grew from a frustration he shares with many in life sciences: biology never innovates at software speed because there is no ethical way to experiment directly on people. Animal models, cell cultures, and organoids are poor substitutes for real human skin.

How does the Michael Polansky training model actually work?

The system is a closed loop. An AI model predicts which untested chemicals may benefit a specific skin function. Those compounds are tested on living tissue kept alive by a proprietary nutrient-and-waste system. Whether the prediction succeeds or fails, the outcome is fed back into the model to sharpen the next round.

Early on, the company mined scientific literature and partnered with the National Cancer Institute on natural compounds—producing a couple of leads in about 18 months. With AI layered in, Outer Biosciences now generates a new candidate roughly every six weeks.

Researchers can also induce UVB damage and track stress, inflammation, and recovery responses over weeks—processes like collagen remodeling and barrier repair that standard lab models cannot capture in a few days. This kind of AI-meets-biology research is pushing dermatology discovery into territory that did not exist before.

Where does the living skin come from?

Outer Biosciences sources human skin that would otherwise be discarded after surgery—mostly plastic surgery—through vetted nonprofit and commercial biobanks operating under institutional review board oversight and documented donor consent. Principal suppliers include the National Disease Research Interchange and the Cooperative Human Tissue Network, both federally funded through the NIH and NCI.

Polansky says the company pays cost-recovery fees rather than purchasing tissue outright, and spent roughly two years building a pipeline to receive samples within hours of surgery while tissue is still living. Every sample arrives de-identified, stripped of names and contact details upstream.

What happens next for Outer Biosciences?

Outer Biosciences is discovering cosmetic ingredients, not drugs, so the path runs through standardized industry naming and OECD safety testing—not full FDA drug approval. Four of its six current leads look likely to reach commercialization, Polansky told TechCrunch.

The company also earns revenue from research partnerships, including a pharmaceutical client studying why certain cancer drugs cause severe skin rashes. All AI work runs on-premise—not in the cloud—because Polansky does not want the proprietary biological data leaving the building.

Competitors exist, including Vivodyne, which raised close to $80 million for lab-grown human organ tissue. Polansky argues Outer Biosciences' edge is real, weeks-long human tissue plus molecular measurements that cannot be scraped from any "biology internet." After years of near-total silence, he says the team is ready to work in public.